This award is an opportunity for patients, families, visitors and Trust colleagues to say ‘thank you – you made a difference’ to a member of staff or a team for anything (however small!) that helped make their experience of our services better.

The winner for October is:

Vicky Surrell, Paediatric Diabetes Nurse, Hinchingbrooke Hospital, Huntingdon

Vicky was nominated by the father of one of her patients. The nomination reads as follows:

“Vicky is my son's diabetes specialist nurse, and quite frankly is an amazing woman and credit to the NHS as a whole. My son was diagnosed at the age of 3, as Type 1 and Vicky has been with us on the journey at every stage, from offering us comfort and solace on his diagnosis to holding multiple training sessions with his school so he could enjoy his first day on a level playing field with every other child - which is all anyone could ever wish for.

“Vicky is incredibly intelligent, fastidious and caring, with a healthy dose of stubbornness and persistence that's meant she's been there every time we've ever needed her - including dropping by to check on our progress on her way home after finishing for the day and calling us back on her day off to answer our questions. 

“As a Type 1 Diabetic of over 30 years myself I feel uniquely qualified to back up those claims. I was diagnosed at an almost identical age to my son (4) and have lived across most regions of the UK, relying on the NHS throughout, and can genuinely say across my 30+ years of living with the condition that I have never come close to having the level of attention and care my son has had from Vicky.

“For that I will forever be grateful and proud that she is his specialist nurse and genuinely feel confident that he will continue getting the highest standards of care and access to every opportunity to excel, because of that no Type 1 Diabetes parent can ever ask for more.”

Congratulations to Vicky!


Other nominees were:

Shagufta Dalal, Specialist Speech and Language Therapist, Cambridgshire

Shagufta was nominated by Elaine Montgomery following an email from a Preschool Manager regarding a visit she had made.  The email read as follows:

"I just felt I needed to send you an email, regarding Shagufta and to let you know how approachable, supportive and kind she is towards staff, children and families. Today when she visited a child within our setting, she was so helpful with the advice she offered, extremely knowledgeable of the levels and approaches the child needed. My staff also felt she gave excellent advice and was able to show them visually the way to hopefully support that child" 

“Shagufta is an invaluable member of the Speech and Language Therapy Team. She works tirelessly to provide outstanding care to the children, families and other professionals she works with. Shagufta is highly respected within our team for her professionalism and expertise, and she is incredibly supportive of those around her. In particular I admire her ability to build a rapport with families who are often going through a difficult time, having being given a diagnosis for their child, as well as her skills in training and empowering parents/carers and support staff to work with their children. Really well done, Shagufta. We're very proud of you.”

Ewelina Jaworska, Health Visitor Havenbridge House, North Quay, Great Yarmouth

Ewelina was nominated by Carolyn Cain for her work with delivering the health visiting service for the last 7 years in Great Yarmouth in Norfolk. Ewelina is Polish and delivers most of her care to Polish families, which has gained the trust of the Polish community in Great Yarmouth and it means that they have been able to deliver effective care and make a huge difference to those children and their parents. Some children and families have been in the child protection arena, which has been at times particularly difficult for them to understand the processes that we have in England. Ewelina works hard to support all families and is a fantastic health visitor, always has a smile on her face no matter how tough work gets and she deserves to be recognized at last for her commitment and passion! 

Karli Williamson, HCA, iCaSH, Kings Brook, Bedford

Karli was commended by Donna Giddings for her hard work with Dr Serish since November when they transferred over to iCaSH. Karli has gone above and beyond to keep the HIV service going and helped with a smooth transition for patients. She comes in on her own at times to do things. She made sure that all patients’ notes, results and Hars were up to date ready for the new HIV nurse when they started in September. She is a great asset to the service.

Lauren Murrell, Physiotherapy Assistant, Dynamichealth, East Cambs and Fenland EC&F

Lauren was nominated by Fiona Bennett for being an asset to the service both on the clinical and administrative side over the last couple of months. Clinically she has stepped in to cover the induction of a new physio assistant at Doddington Hospital, keeping their service running with classes and patient discussion groups, whilst continuing her own classes and groups at North Cambs Hospital. She has also helped the admin team to cover the absence of a colleague. Throughout this time Lauren has continued to work at a high standard at North Cambs Hospital in her usual role. As a team EC&F have benefitted from Laurens offers of help and therefore feel she deserves recognition of this.

Caroline Gibbs, Receptionist, Dental, Hinchingbrooke, Huntingdon

Caroline was commended by Helen Rodley for taking the time to report a disturbed and verbally abusive man who had a knife in his hand to police. She was on her way to work and was on Brampton Road in Huntingdon waiting for the lights to change when she heard a man shouting, she looked round at him and he was very tense, shouting and making threats outside a house and she looked down to see a knife in his hand. School children were walking and cycling past, worried about theirs’s and everyone’s safety including this man, she pulled over and called the police and waited until she knew they were on their way before coming to work. She immediately prepared a statement while the event was fresh in her mind. The man was arrested, her statement was later taken by police and hopefully the man got the help he needed and more importantly no-one was hurt. Caroline took the time to make the call to ensure the safety of the general public and particularly school children and the man involved.”

Sarah Ablett, Healthy Child Programme Admin, Cambridge City and South Health Visiting Team

Sarah was nominated by Kerrin Gilbody for being an amazingly valued member of staff.  There is no job too big or too small that she won't do. There have been a lot of changes to staffing within the team recently; many of which have been extremely stressful, yet Sarah comes into work everyday open minded and just cracks on with the job at hand, always doing much more than required. She will exceed her job role to support other members of the team and all with a consistent smile. She also has the answer to any problem asked and is the IT guru! None of us would have got through the last few months without her; thanks Sarah for being the glue of the office!

South Norfolk Facebook team:
Rachel Harrod, Charlotte Goff (nee Peck), Jacqui Millard and Alex Keep - Assistant Practitioners and Health Visitor and Communications Specialist

For the last 18 months Rachel Harrold and Charlotte Goff (nee Peck), Assistant Practitioners and Jacqui Millard, Health Visitor have developed and maintained the South Norfolk Healthy Child Programme Facebook page, usually in their own time. They post frequently and the mix of informative, relevant and up to date health related advice has made it a really valuable resource for colleagues as well as service users and the general public. It is a popular page and the super fast speed that messages are responded to and the level of interaction and support that is offered to people who get in touch via Facebook demonstrates how vigilant, committed and conscientious the South Norfolk Facebook team are. They make a difference! 

Since the arrival of Alex Keep, Communications Specialist he has focussed on supporting staff, and his support was invaluable recently when the page received a distressing and disturbing private message from the States - 'fake news' that was aimed at Norfolk Virginia Facebook users. Alex quickly adjusted filters and stepped in to monitor messages and set up processes that would prevent this kind of thing from happening again. 

Rachel Harrod recently involved managers and partners in discussions that changed a decision about the age of children that would be able to attend a clinic session after a dialogue with a service user who explained through Facebook that she couldn't attend a local clinic with her new baby if she couldn't bring her older preschool child with her too. This evidence along with other anecdotal feedback was valuable in engaging partners and reaching a decision. The policy review agreed that while the focus of the clinic would be on creation an 'Optimum Nurturing Environment' for young babies, that to prevent social isolation, if people had an older child and had no childcare for them they could bring them too. This excellent example of how we are responsive to service users experience and how feedback influences our service improvement agenda was shared at a Trust Board recently. 

The page is a model for all of their Trust wide social media activity and will help them stay relevant and responsive as 'digital natives' switch communication channels to online. 


Congratulations to everyone who was nominated this month.